Since the age of nine, Ben has been closely involved with the recorder world. After beginning his studies, like so many children, learning the recorder as a part of classroom music lessons, he entered the Royal Academy of Music's Junior Exhibitioner's course as the first ever student to take the recorder as their main instrument. His studies with Christopher Ball laid firm musical foundations which were built on as an undergraduate at Oxford and then as a postgraduate student at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where he studied recorder with Michael Barker and baroque oboe with Frank de Bruine.
Ben has been playing and teaching the recorder and the oboe in and around London for the past fifteen years at all levels, from large groups of infants in inner London primaries to professionals at the Royal College of Music. A special interest in teaching and performing contemporary music, coupled with performances with many of the leading British period instrument orchestras, has ensured that Ben has a wide experience of many types of performing experience. Since 2001 he has worked at the examination board Trinity College London managing the development and production of new syllabuses in Music, and is particularly proud of the 2003 series of books of recorder music. He also teaches the recorder at The Centre For Young Musicians at Morley College.